Always a Thief - Kay Hooper [64]
Had it been Nightshade? Or someone else?
Who had been the real target tonight, him—or Morgan?
That was the question he couldn't answer, whether Morgan's attacker had grabbed her only because she'd been in the way or because she had been the real target all along. That was the question that left him cold. Because if she had been the target, he could think of only two reasons why: Someone wanted to get their hands on the director of the Mysteries Past exhibit, or someone knew or had guessed how important she was to a thief named Quinn.
And now what? He was running out of time, dammit, he could feel it. After tonight, he was going to be walking a high wire without a net, and he wasn't sure he could maintain his balance. Not now. Not anymore.
He was no longer on that high wire alone.
“Alex?”
He turned immediately, crossing the dim room to return to the bed. Sliding under the covers, he pulled her into his arms and held her without force, fighting the instincts urging him to hold her with all his strength. “Sorry I woke you,” he murmured.
“Is something wrong?” she asked softly, her warm body pressed to his.
“No, sweetheart, nothing's wrong,” he lied. “Go back to sleep.”
Within minutes, he knew she had, her breath soft against his skin. Very gently, careful not to wake her, he stroked her back, enjoying the satiny feel of her skin and the radiant warmth of her body.
She loved him. That was what she'd said, and said with quiet conviction. Knowing him for a liar and a thief, she loved him. It was remarkable. She was remarkable.
Staring up at the lightening ceiling of her bedroom, Quinn wondered if Morgan would love him when she knew the truth.
“I thought you weren't supposed to work weekends,” Jared said as he came into the computer room.
Sipping her third cup of coffee that morning, Storm shrugged and said, “Wolfe and I are both too restless to stay home with all this going on. The exhibit, the trap, this mysterious other player in the game. We both came in hours ago.”
“Where is Wolfe?”
“If he's not prowling around the exhibit, he's down in the basement. Prowling around.”
“The police searched the basement.”
“Yeah, but we all know it's a huge space. And since he's spent months finding all the corners and hidey-holes—even down there—he won't feel at ease until he's finished his own search.”
Jared grunted and sat down in her visitor's chair.
She eyed him. “You look beat. Long night?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought Alex was taking the midnight-to- dawn duty.”
Jared explained briefly what had happened the night before, including the phone call from Keane.
“Morgan's all right?”
“According to Alex, yeah. At the moment, I'm more concerned by what the M.E. found in Jane Doe's body.”
“Spider venom. Black widow spider venom. Have you run that little detail through NCIC?”
He nodded. “No matches. Far as the Crime Information Center is concerned, finding spider venom of any kind in an already dead murder victim isn't part of any active killer's M.O. Or any inactive killer's, for that matter.”
“I guess you checked with Interpol?”
“Yeah, same results.”
Storm leaned back in her chair and propped her boots on the desk. “I'm still stuck wondering why all the signposts. They've gotta be leading us somewhere, but you'd think it would be away from the museum instead of to it. I mean, there are other valuables in the city, but nothing so well protected that a thief would need to go to all this trouble to distract us from them. The Bannister collection has to be a prime target. So why keep leading us back here?”
“The question of the hour.”
“We're missing something.”
“Yeah, I got that feeling.”
“You haven't told Wolfe about Keane's call last night, have you?”
“Keane was planning to call him first thing this morning. Probably has by now.”
“Why didn't one